by Zahraa Al-Dawood
The Writing Center hosted Ms. Hoda El-Bakhour’s interactive workshop titled “Play-jə-ˌri-zəm: Not a Game You Want to Play!” on Tuesday, November 10, 2020, from 3 to 4 pm.
The workshop was attended by around fifteen students from different disciplines and classes who learned about the importance of citing their sources and avoiding plagiarism.
Ms. Hoda started the workshop by facilitating a discussion about why we cite, and explained that we don’t cite just to avoid plagiarizing but to also add credibility to our work. The participants in the workshop played a game where they had to ‘defeat goblins’ by correctly answering questions about plagiarism and citing sources. Ms. Hoda then showed the participants a paragraph in an article about why students cheat. She separated the participants into three different groups to promote discussion, and gave each a group a theme: fully agree with the author, fully disagree with the author, and partially agree with the author. Each group was required to write a short paragraph, with in-text citations, to reflect on their opinion. At the end of the session, the groups shared their responses and discussed their different viewpoints.
The interactive workshop, overall, was very informative, and helped students creatively understand why it is important to cite.